


A Very Secret (Agent) Santa

by CharlieBradbury



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Secret Santa, hints of Skye/May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlieBradbury/pseuds/CharlieBradbury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye just wants it to be Christmas on the bus, is that too much to ask?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Secret (Agent) Santa

“Secret Santa?” Ward scoffs.

“Oh, I think it’s great!” Simmons crows, smiling widely. “It’d be fun, wouldn’t it Fitz?”

Fitz scratches the back of his head, looking from Skye’s hopeful look to Simmons’s expectant gaze. Then to Ward’s furrowed brow. “Well, would Agent Coulson even okay that? And what, precisely, would the lucky soul to get May get her?”

“Please, Coulson’ll okay it. He’s all about the whole teamwork shtick, it’d be a great bonding exercise or something. And, well. May’s got to want something right?” Skye’s smile puckers into nothingness as May comes striding through the open doors, glaring as if she knows they were just talking about her. “Hey May,” Skye says weakly.

“Hi,” May answers dryly. “What's the mark’s location?” Simmons pointedly clears her throat and brings up a map on the table.  
\----  
The next day, May’s making a trip down to the bar to grab a bottle of water before returning to the cockpit. The mark dropped off their radar, but with his abilities it wasn’t much of a surprise. They were waiting now for Coulson and Ward to come back with something useful from a recon of the mark’s hometown.

Skye scrambles to shove some paper under a folder on the bar, grinning too widely at the agent. “Hi, how’s it going?”

“What’s this?” May asks, placing one finger deliberately on a scrap of paper jutting out from under the file. It just says, ‘Ward’ in Skye’s terrible handwriting.

“Well, I mean, I just thought, y’know with the holidays and us being constantly on the clock, none of us would really have time to do any celebrating, so-”

“Secret Santa?” May asks flatly, looking up at the girl in disbelief. Skye just nods helplessly. “Coulson’ll love it,” She says simply. “Water bottle?”

“Really-what? Oh.” Skye whirls around, opening the fridge and grabbing a bottle of water. She offers it to May, who takes it and the slip of paper, giving Skye a significant look. “All right, guess Ward’s taken care of. Cool.” May considers the paper, letting it slip into a waste bin compartment when she’s out of Skye’s sight. She wonders what would be a proper gift for Agent Ward.  
\----  
Simmons practically vibrates in the passenger seat of the short bus, a plastic case clutched to her chest. May feels blinded by the huge smile splitting the girl’s face in two, when when not looking straight at her, and definitely irritated by the constant drumming of her fingers against the plastic case.

“Stop that,” she grates. Simmons straightens in her seat, clenching the edge of the case hard.

Fitz leans froward from the back seat. “Thank you,” he stage-whispers to May. “What is wrong with you?” he directs to Simmons. “You only ever fidget that much when someone you fancy is near or you’re keeping a secret.”

“I can fidget whenever it suits me, Fitz,” she spits out, smile dropping off her face.

“So what secret is it, cause I know you don’t fancy anyone in this car.”

Simmons roll her eyes and say, “Oh, I don’t know maybe something to do with a certain Saint Nicholas,” she says cryptically. She can see Fitz scrunching his face up in confusion in the rear-view mirror. Undeterred, she turns to May. “So, Agent May-”

“As long as it’s something useful, I’ll like it,” May says.

“How did you know I was going to-”

“You’re not exactly hard to figure out, Simmons,” Fitz says, his sideways glance out of the window betraying his realization that he was very slow on the uptake.

“I also like coffee,” May murmurs.

“Oh really? What kinds-There, there, there!” Simmons shouts, flinging her arm across May’s face and pointing down a side street. May yanks the wheel sharply, braking slightly before gunning the gas. “He’s on a motorbike, there!” Fitz is reporting back to the bus, Coulson's barking orders in all their ears. May doesn’t have time to wonder at her unbidden overshare. Yeah, she likes coffee. Coulson knows and sometimes makes two cups when he’s in the kitchen and knows she’ll be by soon. She shrugs it off, figuring that free coffee paraphernalia is never a bad thing.  
\----  
Bullets ricochet around them as Ward and Skye duck into an aisle in the Mom’n’Pop convenience store. Shreds of paper and packaging flutter around them as Ward grabs for his sidearm. “Jeez, I will never get used to people shooting at me,” Skye swears.

“Don’t expect to,” Ward warns. “It never stops being unnerving.”

”Are you actually owning up to being ‘unnerved?’” she asks incredulously, scanning their immediate area to see if there’s a back exit. And that’s when her eye lands near the ancient coffee machine. “That’s it!” she whispers, scrambling to her feet and dashing towards the back of the store. The goons chasing them cease fire long enough for her to dart around a few aisles. Ward curses up a storm and covers her, firing off a few rounds to discourage their pursuers. 

“Skye stay down!” he shouts as she jumps up and grabs something off a high shelf. A bag of coffee beans explodes right next to where her hand had been milliseconds ago. “What the hell-” He glares at the thing she’s clutching to her chest. “You risked your life for a-”

“Secret Santa, it’s perfect!” she hisses, tucking the box into her shirt. “C’mon, exit’s over there.” She crouches and moves towards the right, where Ward can now see the emergency exit sign glowing red above them. He presses his lips tightly together in disapproval and follows her closely.  
\----  
Coulson walks into the sitting room, almost into a wreath that pokes out from a column. “Skye?” he calls.

“’Sup AC?” Skye asks from where she’s stringing some lights along a shelf.

“Just making sure the Krampus hasn’t eaten you. Or that you’ve strangled yourself with tinsel.”

“Ho ho ho,” she says sarcastically, stepping down from the chair to admire her handiwork.

“You’re really going all out aren’t you?” he asks, noticing the candles and poinsettias on the tables and the bar.

“Yeah, well. Nothing by halves, right?” she mutters, adjusting a small metal reindeer on a nearby table. “Anyway, everyone’s going to be in here in half an hour to exchange the gifts. Is it too early to break out the eggnog cause I googled this recipe and it said to ‘add rum to taste’ and well, I couldn’t taste much afterwards-”

“Skye,” Coulson says softly. “Ward said you put yourself in danger to get a Christmas present.”

“I could hear them reloading, I had enough time to grab it,” she explains, her back still towards Coulson.

“What’s going on? Why are you so adamant about celebrating Christmas?” When she doesn’t say anything, he continues. “Don’t get me wrong, it was my favorite holiday when I was a kid.”

She finally turns, sitting down swiftly on a chair. “It was? Why isn’t it now?”

“Well,” he says, sitting on the couch opposite of her. “It was the only time we got everyone in the family together that wasn’t a funeral. All my aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone. And the presents were great, what kid doesn’t love free stuff? But it was more about seeing everyone I cared about, gathered in one place with nothing to do but just...be together.”

“Holidays were usually the only time I’d get anything that wasn’t used,” Skye says quietly. “It just...It really hits you how much you’re alone and different when nothing you have is just yours, not anyone else’s. But Christmas time we’d always get at least one thing ‘cause people like racking up good karma with donations and all. So, yeah it was pretty petty but it was the only time of the year I could feel like a normal kid.” She scratches the back of her head. “And now, with all of our running around and all the abnormal stuff we get into, I just thought a little normalcy might do our collective sanity some good.”

Coulson smiles fondly at her. “You’re probably right. Just take care of yourself. It’s hard to hang mistletoe with a bullet wound.”

Her eyes light up. “Oh, my god, I completely forgot about mistletoe! I have to get some, are we making any stops soon?”

Phil’s about to tell her that they won’t be back on the ground in time, thankfully, when an alarm sounds and Ward’s voice comes over the intercom announces that their mark has suddenly disappeared. Coulson’s friendly smile drops from his face as they both race wordlessly towards the stairs.  
\----  
That wasn’t the worst mission, but May definitely could have done with out the heart-stopping moment yesterday when Simmons looked like she was going to drop a few hundred feet to a rocky death. She’s thinking about asking Coulson to just ban forest and mountain based missions, since they all seem to end disastrously.

As if in response to her thoughts, the door to the cockpit clicks open. “I don’t need your lecture tonight, Coulson. Just that your word that we’ll never step foot outside of a city again.”

“Not Coulson, but I so second that,” Skye’s exhausted voice answers as she slumps into the copilot seat. Reaching up to flip a switch, May apologizes. “No worries, I hardly ever bug you here. But uh, think you can put this thing into autopilot long enough to open this?” May spares her a sideways glance, finding that the girl’s holding a brightly colored box in her hands.

“So you got me?” she says resignedly, pushing a few buttons before taking the headset off. The night sky is peppered liberally with sparkling stars and the moon is full, the cool light of it drowning out the warm yellow and red lights of the control board.

“Yep. And Fitz got me, so God knows what the guy got me.”

“Expect it to come with an instruction manual, and to not know how to use it regardless.”

Skye barks out a surprised laugh. “So, shocking sense of humor aside. Here, merry Christmas.” She holds the box out with a smirk.

May nearly rolls her eyes but restrains herself and accepts the package. She unwraps the paper efficiently, not tearing or wrinkling it. Skye takes it from her, balling it up. May looks down at the box, which bears a few simply painted sparrows. She opens the cardboard box and pulls out a ceramic travel mug, flared wide at the bottom. The sparrows are repeated along the sides of it, along with puffy clouds.

“Simmons said you like coffee. Figured this one wouldn’t tip over too easily what with all the turbulence we seem to experience. I saw it in the convenience store Ward and me got chased into.”

May’s eyebrow shoots up. “This is what you almost caught a bullet for?”

“Well, it’s not that dramatic,” Skye says with a flip of her hair. “No big deal. I even dropped a twenty on the counter, so it’s legit.”

May sighs, leveling her with a stern glare. “You shouldn’t have-”

“Aw, it was nothing,” Skye says with a flippant wave of her hand.

“No, I mean-”

“I know,” Skye seethes. She pulls her knees up to her chest. “I know I shouldn’t have jumped up and put myself in the line of fire. Ward’s frowned at me enough, I get it. I just, I saw it and my brain just-I heard their guns click empty so I knew I had a window and I went for it.” She shrugs. “Sue me.”

May considers her carefully, while the girl stares hard out into the stars. She hefts the mug in her hand, tracing a finger along one of the clouds. “Thank you, Skye,” she says softly, setting it on a clear space on the center console. “It’s nice.”

A slow smile spreads across Skye’s face. She tries to hide it by biting her lip, and May’s eyes move back to the front. “You’re welcome,” Skye says, settling back into the seat. “Merry Christmas, May.”

“It’s the 26th in this timezone.”

“You just had to ruin it,” Skye huffs.

**Author's Note:**

> First work for this series, and I seriously love all the baby agents. Don't get me wrong, Coulson's the OG but the newbies have grown on me.


End file.
